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MISCELLANEOUS / Upcoming neuro appointment
« Last post by agate on Today at 09:05:41 pm »Time for a blogpost even though this isn't a blog.
I have a routine neuro appointment coming up, and I'll be telling the neuro about the nystagmus episode I had last October, a couple of hours after getting the super-strength flu shot.
I hadn't had nystagmus so severely since the late 1970s or so, and it was just as frightening and show-stopping this time as it was then. When your eyes are whirling around in your head, you can "see" colors and shapes but they make no sense. They are totally meaningless. You are suddenly blinded, in other words.
This used to happen to me when I was walking around. I never was troubled much by it since getting the wheelchair. I had only a few such episodes but with each one I had to stop in my tracks and grope my way to a wall or column, a vertical surface against which I could lean and immobilize myself totally, resting my head against that surface, and wait for my eyes to calm down. After a while--maybe half an hour?--they obligingly did settle down.
This time, though, I was in my wheelchair and had been in it all morning. I had had to make some sharp turns, both while in a van riding home from that flu shot and then on entering the building. It may have been the turns that triggered the problem. In the past turning up and down the aisles of a supermarket used to bring on less severe episodes of the same problem.
So I'll be telling the neuro about this. She probably won't regard it as an exacerbation since it didn't last the required 24 hours. It lasted only about an hour.
I'm hoping she won't decide that the Glatopa caused it.
However, maybe Glatopa needs to be reconsidered. I misremembered why I stopped taking Copaxone (another version of glatiramer acetate = Glatopa) years ago. I refreshed my memory today by looking up my record.
I stopped taking it because of "bowel urgency." I have been troubled by "bowel urgency" again in recent months--but had forgotten that I'd had it before and associated it with the glatiramer shots.
"Bowel urgency" means the occasional loss of control. It means frequent trips to the bathroom, sometimes 10 times in a day. I can cope with this on days when I'm home alone with nothing much to do but not every day is like that, and furthermore, all of those bathroom sessions can leave a person very sore.
I looked up Glatopa today and found that, yes indeed, "bowel urgency" is listed as a possible adverse reaction to it.
So I may be giving it up soon. Tomorrow I will see what the neuro has to say. She wasn't entirely on board with my resuming it in the first place.
I have a routine neuro appointment coming up, and I'll be telling the neuro about the nystagmus episode I had last October, a couple of hours after getting the super-strength flu shot.
I hadn't had nystagmus so severely since the late 1970s or so, and it was just as frightening and show-stopping this time as it was then. When your eyes are whirling around in your head, you can "see" colors and shapes but they make no sense. They are totally meaningless. You are suddenly blinded, in other words.
This used to happen to me when I was walking around. I never was troubled much by it since getting the wheelchair. I had only a few such episodes but with each one I had to stop in my tracks and grope my way to a wall or column, a vertical surface against which I could lean and immobilize myself totally, resting my head against that surface, and wait for my eyes to calm down. After a while--maybe half an hour?--they obligingly did settle down.
This time, though, I was in my wheelchair and had been in it all morning. I had had to make some sharp turns, both while in a van riding home from that flu shot and then on entering the building. It may have been the turns that triggered the problem. In the past turning up and down the aisles of a supermarket used to bring on less severe episodes of the same problem.
So I'll be telling the neuro about this. She probably won't regard it as an exacerbation since it didn't last the required 24 hours. It lasted only about an hour.
I'm hoping she won't decide that the Glatopa caused it.
However, maybe Glatopa needs to be reconsidered. I misremembered why I stopped taking Copaxone (another version of glatiramer acetate = Glatopa) years ago. I refreshed my memory today by looking up my record.
I stopped taking it because of "bowel urgency." I have been troubled by "bowel urgency" again in recent months--but had forgotten that I'd had it before and associated it with the glatiramer shots.
"Bowel urgency" means the occasional loss of control. It means frequent trips to the bathroom, sometimes 10 times in a day. I can cope with this on days when I'm home alone with nothing much to do but not every day is like that, and furthermore, all of those bathroom sessions can leave a person very sore.
I looked up Glatopa today and found that, yes indeed, "bowel urgency" is listed as a possible adverse reaction to it.
So I may be giving it up soon. Tomorrow I will see what the neuro has to say. She wasn't entirely on board with my resuming it in the first place.